Blog posts

Hamelman Olive Levain Baguettes redux.

What happens when I get inattentive during a step.  In this case, the seam wasn't sealed tightly on this one, or more likely didn't go on the baking peel seam side down.   Or both!  Fortunately these are few and far between.  It will still be a tasty treat.

From the top angle view - all seems to be dandy.  This time I used better quality olives so the taste should be improved as well as upped the hydration by about 2-3%.  I really can't say with any accuracy, I just added a few extra grams of water.

I am presenting at many IT conferences and other speakers know me for baking bread. Yesterday evening we had a welcome reception dinner for a conference in Bulgaria and I proposed to the organizer that I will provide all bread for the dinner.

To pair the bread with the menu I prepared 3 loaves:

- Butternut Squash bread with pumpkin seeds

- Oat porridge sourdough with flax, sunflower and sesame seeds

- Olive bread with Mediterranean spices

I purchased myself some w/m spelt whilst my wife was shopping in Fremantle and this is what I did with it

The book "Sourdough" by Sara Owens was a surprise gift in more ways than one earlier this year.  First, I was not expecting it, had not asked for it, and in fact, did not know about it.  Second, it has proven to be a wonderful, inspiring and tasty addition to my library!  Others have already posted my favorite bread from the book, the Honey Oatmeal Spelt recipe, so I decided, finally, after what must be two years of lurking, baking, and silence since my last blog entry, to post something for once.

Hello, TFLers -- I'm a longtime lurker and relatively new sourdough baker. I've learned a lot from this site and am hoping to start logging some of my bakes here to learn even more from some of you!

Park Tae Young's first loaf. She has "Korean" roots so what's better than use her in a bread with Korean flavors. This is just an improved version of my Pane Yaksik, the very first bread I baked in 2016.

  After the nice and hearty apple cider walnut rye bread I baked I needed something a little lighter.  This bake with durum, spelt, cream cheese and baby purple potatoes that I roasted the night before was just the ticket.  The cream cheese and potatoes really made for a nice soft and moist crumb.

You can see the pretty purple bits of potato sticking out of the crumb and the nice nutty flavors of the spelt and durum really make this one worth baking again.

just a bit of an article that might interest members in the Phnom Penh Post

Phnom Penh Post - The prodigal baker returns, and he’s brought along some fresh ideas

It was my daughter's baby shower on the weekend, and I made good old spinach dip. Of course, you need to put it in a sourdough bread bowl, right? So I added one 123 sourdough boule to the weekend bake. It turned out to be so good, I'm making smaller bread bowls (or boules, if they don't want them for holding soup!) for the subscription list customers for Wednesday. Nice creamy open gelatinized crumb, but I didn't get a crumb shot because I hollowed it out at the shower and it was devoured!

Sometimes it's nice to get back to basics. :)

A quick bread made with a bottle of dark stout, 50/50 wholewheat flour and bread flour and yeast. The dough was too soft for a freeform loaf and while digging for a loaf pan, I found my plum pudding mould and dumped the dough into that instead. I rather like the shape.